ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Cross out the word ‘discouragement’ from your dictionary of love; the more you feel your weakness and the difficulty of recollecting yourself, and the more hidden the Master seems, the more you must rejoice, for then you are giving to Him…. What does it matter what we feel; He is the unchanging one…. He loves you today as He loved you yesterday and will love you tomorrow. ELIZABETH OF THE TRINITY

FLIGHT INTO EGYPT (Sir 3:2-6, 12-14; Col 3:12-21; Mt 2:13-15, 19-23) December 28, 2025 And the Word was made flesh, and he pitched his tent among us (Jn 1:14). Yes, the Son of the most high God chose to live right in the midst of our lowly lives, just as they are right now, filled as they are with all manner of wonders, sorrows and incongruities. He loved us so much that he ardently desired to take upon himself all the consequences of sharing our lives totally, intimately, holding nothing back. Though we do not see him materially, nothing in the universe is more intimately and vividly present to us than Christ Jesus, the Word made man, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, in whom and for whom we were created. Therefore , as we see in the gospel we have just heard, from the very beginning Jesus’ life on earth was marked by neediness, threats and hostility, just like the lives of the most vulnerable human beings among us. In her liturgy of the first Sunday after Christmas today, the ...

Brother and sisters, during the octave before Christmas, we prayed the following words from the preface: “…The Virgin Mother longed for him with love beyond all telling…” On this Christmas night, enveloped as we are by the great mystery of God become man, let us try to enter into Our Lady’s love beyond all telling: What moved her to so great a love? How did she express this love? And how can we share in this exchange of love? Her love beyond all telling includes her desire that we, too, should share in the great mystery of our religion, that is, her Child Jesus who is our God and savior, Christ and Lord.   Of course, Our Lady did not approach mystery of the incarnation with the erudition of a Church Father. She was a young woman, a simple Jewish maiden and wife, and in the last days of her pregnancy. I assume she would have been familiar, at least to some extent, having listened to her parents and the synagogue liturgy, with the words we have just heard proclaimed: “The people wh...

Of old, God the incorporeal and formless was never depicted, but now that God has been seen in the flesh and has associated with humankind, I depict what I have seen of God. I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked salvation, and I will not cease from referencing matter through which my salvation was worked. SAINT JOHN DAMASCENE Merry Christmas from all of us here at St. Joseph's Abbey!

Mother church places John the Baptist before her children precisely as we are preparing for Christmas for a good reason…. His life and message remind us that Advent is not yet Christmas—that this penitential time leads to joy only if we heed it's message. John the Baptist—who leaped for joy in his mother's womb—is joy's perfect messenger because he shows us it's necessary elements: Repentance, humility, and sacrifice. FR. PAUL SCALIA

Let us arise, then. Let us shake the sleep out of our eyes—the sleep of emotions run amuck; the sleep of indifference, of tepidity, of self-pity, of fighting God… Let us arise from that sleep…and begin our journey to Bethlehem. But let us understand that this Bethlehem we seek is within our own souls, our own hearts…. It is an inner pilgrimage, a pilgrimage in which we don't use our feet…. So, then, let us enter, you and I, into the pilgrimage that doesn't take us from home. For ours is a journey of the spirit, which is a thousand times harder than a journey of the feet. Let us “arise and go.” SERVANT OF GOD CATHERINE DE HUECK DOHERTY

There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world. ST. TERESA OF JESUS

God always answers, maybe today or tomorrow, but he always answers, in one way or another. He always answers. The Bible repeats it countless times. God listens to the cry of those who invoke Him. Even our reluctant questions, those that remain in the depths of our heart, that we are ashamed to express: the Father listens to them and wishes to give us the Holy Spirit, which inspires every prayer and transforms everything. Brothers and sisters, in prayer there is always a question of patience, always, of supporting the wait. Now we are in the time of Advent, a time that is typically of expectation; of expectation of Christmas. We are in waiting. This is clear to see. But all our life is also in waiting. And prayer is always in expectation, because we know that the Lord will answer. POPE FRANCIS General audience, 9 December 2020

 When one of my grandnephews was born, he was so tiny that when I first met him, he fit easily into his father’s hands. Today, he is a tall, strapping young man.   I suppose that I could apply to him the saying, “From tiny acorns mighty oak trees grow.”   The acorn is the seed of an oak tree, and today in the gospel we hear of the miraculously fertilized ovum of Mary, now a noticeable fetus; the divine-human seed of her son has been growing in her womb.   At first, this is to the consternation of Joseph who has not yet taken her into his home, the second stage of a Jewish marriage at that time.   But he is calmed by a heavenly message which informs him that the child is conceived of the Holy Spirit, and that this child will save us all from our sins.   Yes, he will be our Savior, Emmanuel, God with us.       What does that in face mean, that Jesus is our Savior, or Redeemer? I certainly could never buy the medieval ideas that “redeemer” meant...

You must accustom yourself to make a little sanctuary in your heart where you will always find our Lord even in the midst of occupations and distractions; and then, as soon as you are alone, as soon as you have a few minutes a fire shall flame out. BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION Union with God

Jesus, the Lord, expects us to have the simplicity of a dove. This means giving a straightforward opinion about things in the way we honestly see them, without needless reservations. It also means doing things without double dealing or manipulation, our intention being focused solely on God. Each of us, then, should take care to behave always in the spirit of simplicity, remembering that God likes to deal with the simple, and that he conceals the secrets of heaven from the wise and prudent of this world and reveals them to little ones. SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL

Many appear full of mildness and sweetness as long as everything goes their own way; but the moment any contradiction or adversity arises, they are in a flame, and begin to rage like a burning mountain. Such people as these are like red-hot coals hidden under ashes. This is not the mildness which our Lord undertook to teach us in order to make us like Himself. ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

Trinitarian life is also our life…. There is one life of the Triune God, a life in which we graciously have been included as partners…a comprehensive plan of God reaching from creation to consummation, in which God and all creatures are destined to exist together in the mystery of love and communion. CATHERINE MOWRY LACUGNA God for Us

For Christians, the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ constitutes an extraordinary revelation of divine love in the act of overcoming the human sinfulness that lies at the root of evil in our world. The relevance of this…needs to be further elaborated by drawing out its implications in a number of areas, beginning with the sinfulness of human beings and how that sinfulness distorts fundamentally our understanding of God. In this Christological perspective, conventional human wisdom is subverted and turned entirely on its head by the foolishness of God. Likewise, the conventional perception of risk is shattered, for the death and resurrection of Christ revealed God to be utterly reckless in wagering everything on human freedom, in surrendering the success or failure of the entire project of creation into human hands, and to be utterly vulnerable in having to pay the price of that wager. JOE EGAN The Godless Delusion

We must remember that the Word, the Son of God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is hidden in essence and presence, in the inmost being of the soul…. Oh thou soul, then, most beautiful of creatures, who so long to know the place where your beloved is, that you may seek and be united to Him, know now that you are yourself that very tabernacle where He dwells, the secret chamber of His retreat where He is hidden. ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS Spiritual Canticle, st. 1.6-7

Our soul is so preciously loved of Him that is highest, that it passes the knowing of all creatures. That is to say that there is no creature that is made that may fully know how much, how sweetly and how tenderly that our maker loves us. JULIAN OF NORWICH Revelations of Divine Love

The heart of Jesus will dilate our hearts by teaching us to love above all else the glory of God and the salvation of souls.... We rely far too much on our own strength when our helplessness is obvious, and because we do not depend enough on the heart of Jesus, on his love for us. The heart of Jesus is able and desires to give us the saintly powers we need, confidence and love, which inspire adoration, thanksgiving, and atonement, by placing the glory of God above all else. FR. REGINALD GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, O.P.

The world, when it comments upon the shortness of life, does so with a note of sadness, it complains about the brevity of things; man often lives on his memories. And the past, what good does it serve? It can't be changed. He keeps searching in the time remaining to him for what he missed in the past; he comes to his last years, and in these the nostalgia for the past and the sense of the brevity of things is even sharper. How sad the old age of the world! SAINT RAFAEL ARNÁIZ BARÓN

Is there anything He can refuse us in the future, if already in the present He gives himself to us as our food? The Eucharist is our one happiness on earth. BLESSED JOSEPH CASSANT, OCSO

Br Adam and Fr Isaac last wrote you about the renovation of the hermitage here at the abbey. Here is a timeline report to bring you up to date on this project. The re-building of the hermitage was substantially completed mid-December 2024.   Our abbot Dom Vincent and a substantial cohort of the community came out on Gaudete Sunday to bless the hermitage and the hermit, placing both under the care of Santa Maria del Silenzio.   Fr. Vincent noted that the hermitage shares in the monastery’s mission as a “monastic institute wholly dedicated to contemplation”.   Likewise, the hermitage in particular makes present the life of Nazareth in its silence, hiddenness and ordinariness.   The Vigil Mass of Christmas 2024 resumed the Liturgy at the hermitage and was offered in thanksgiving for the generosity of all of you who supported this endeavor in every and any way.   The everyday life of the hermitage was resumed on the feast of the Holy Family and continues uninterrupt...

Be mindful of God, so that in every moment he may be mindful of you. If he is mindful of you, he will give you salvation. Do not forget him, letting yourselves be seduced by vain distractions. Do you want him to forget you in your times of temptation? Stay near him and obey him in the days of your prosperity. You will be able to rely on his word in difficult days. Because prayer will keep you safe in his continuous presence you may constantly be before his face.Think of him, remember him in your heart. Otherwise, if you only meet him from time to time, you risk losing your close friendship with him. ISAAC OF NINEVEH Philocalia

In general, the reason why many souls have no love or inclination towards virtue is that they harbor affections and desires which are neither innocent nor directed wholly towards God. He therefore who loves anything beside God renders his soul incapable of the divine union and transformation into God. ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS The Ascent of Mount Carmel

Believe more and more intensely in God's love. Or, better, that God is Love: that, for Him, to be and to love are one and the same thing. Remember what Saint Augustine wrote on the text: "I am, Who am". Change the word being for loving and you will still be far from reaching the limits of that truth which is Love. Despite all the penetration of his genius Saint Augustine never reached those limits. No one ever will— there are no limits! The Love of God is boundless Light. A CARTHUSIAN They Speak by Silences

Back in the late 1950s, in my early teenage years, just before Castro’s Revolution and his accession to mock-messianic power, I attended an all-boys’ school in provincial Cuba run by the Marist Brothers. First Fridays of the month were rigorously consecrated to devotion to the Sacred Heart, a focus of Catholic piety that at that time was inseparable from the veneration of Christ the King. On First Fridays the whole student body of about 200 would gather in the garth first thing in the morning, and we would rededicate ourselves to the enthralling mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During the almost 70 years of living I’ve done since then, one phrase from the consecration prayer that we all recited in schoolboy unison—like the multiplication tables—has stuck firmly in my memory and gently haunted me: Tuyos somos y tuyos queremos ser: “Yours we are and yours do we want to be.” My mind stored away this formulation as a memorable puzzle, and its singsong rhythm and mystery have never lo...

We should find God in what we know, not in what we don't; not in outstanding problems but in those we have already solved…. We must not wait until we are at the end of our tether: he must be found at the center of life and not only in death; in health and vigor, and not only in suffering; in activity, and not only in sin. DIETRICH BONHEOFFER  Prison Letters

The “bodily” union of humanity with God made present to it has been, in a manner beyond all comprehension, presented to us in terms of eros , as the fulfillment of what the Song of Songs had celebrated long before: existence as a bridal state. HANS URS VON BALTHASAR A Theology of History